Tuesday, June 8, 2010

White House Declares War On Labor

I know I'm often mad when I write on this blog, but reading this from Ben Smith of Politico honestly made me want to throw my computer through the television and go to bed:

A senior White House official just called me with a very pointed message for the administration's sometime allies in organized labor, who invested heavily in beating Blanche Lincoln, Obama's candidate, in Arkanas.

"Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toiled on a pointless exercise," the official said. "If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country, that could have made a real difference in November."

While Labor "flushed away" money by supporting challenging someone who opposed their agenda, the Obama Administration was wisely spending the Democratic National Committee's resources to nominate an unelectable Republican.

As the AFL CIO said in a statement a few minutes ago, organized labor exists to support the interests of their members, not for the benefit the Democratic party or the Obama Administration. The next time they stick up for our issues will be the first, so if Obama's concerned that we aren't clapping loud enough when you give us the excise tax, eliminate the public option and don't push the Employee Free Choice Act, I don't know what to say.

Eddie Vale of the AFL-CIO is last night's real winner with this brilliant response the the White House:

"We are not an arm of the White House or the DNC or a political party," said AFL-CIO spokesman Eddie Vale. "We work on issues. And if we feel like someone is standing up for working families, we support them, and if they don't, we won't support it. In the past, people would have assumed that was talk, but now we have backed that up with action."

"Is the lesson they are taking out of tonight that they can go after labor and anonymously trash us and we will put our tail in between our legs and slink home? That ain't happening," Vale added.

Driving home the point that the White House was cravenly hiding behind the cloak of anonymity in their attacks, the AFL-CIO spokesman signed off the conversation with the following: "My name is Eddie Vale of the AFL-CIO and I'm proud to fight for working families and I don't hide behind anonymous quotes."

So, Senior White House Official who was so courageous that they anonymously fires off a gloating email to multiple journalists, from the bottom of my heart: Fuck off.

Have fun with Blanche Lincoln, Arlen Specter, Joe Lieberman and Douche bags you've seem to enjoy coddling. The age old question in the Labor movement is "which side are you on" and if we've learned nothing else tonight, you've made it pretty clear where you stand.